GENEVA: At least 170 civilians were killed in more than 400 military air strikes conducted in Myanmar during nearly two months surrounding its widely-criticized elections, the United Nations said Friday.
The UN rights office said “credible sources” had verified that at least “170 civilians were killed in some 408 military aerial attacks reported by open sources during the voting period — between December 2025 and January 2026.”
James Rodehaver, head of the rights office’s Myanmar team, warned that the actual numbers might be higher.
Speaking from Bangkok, he told reporters in Geneva that the verification covered a period from December to late last week, from the beginning of the election campaign and up until the three phases of voting were nearly complete.
But he warned that “because of the way in which communications are cut off and because of, frankly, the fear of individuals in some of these locations to speak to us, it sometimes takes a lot longer to get that information.”
His comments came amid global outrage over Myanmar’s month-long vote that democracy watchdogs dismissed as a rebranding of army rule, five years after a coup that ousted popular democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi.
UN rights chief Volker Turk warned in a statement Friday that “the profound and widespread despair inflicted on the people of Myanmar” since the 2021 coup “has only deepened with the recent election staged by the military.”
He pointed out that “many people chose either to vote or not to vote purely out of fear, flatly at odds with their internationally guaranteed civil and political rights — and with ripple effects on their enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights.”
“The conflict and insecurity continued unabated in large parts of the country. Opposition candidates and some ethnic groups were excluded,” he said.
His office pointed out that the elections were held in only 263 of 330 townships, and often exclusively in urban centers under military control, and limited in conflict areas.
“As a result, large segments of the population, especially the displaced and minorities, such as the ethnic Rohingya, were excluded,” it pointed out.
Turk decried that five years of military rule in Myanmar had been “characterised by repression of political dissent, mass arbitrary arrests, arbitrary conscription, widespread surveillance and limitation of civic space.”
“Now, the military is seeking to entrench its rule-by-violence after forcing people to the ballot box,” he said.
“This couldn’t be further from civilian rule.”
At least 170 civilians killed in Myanmar air strikes during election: UN
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At least 170 civilians killed in Myanmar air strikes during election: UN
- At least 170 civilians were killed in more than 400 military air strikes conducted in Myanmar during nearly two months surrounding its widely-criticized elections, the United Nations said Friday
Burkina jihadist attacks on army leave at least 10 dead
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: Suspected Islamist militants attacked an army unit in northern Burkina Faso Sunday, the latest in a series of alleged jihadist attacks that have killed at least 10 people in four days, security sources told AFP.
The west African country, ruled by a military junta since a 2022 coup, has been plagued with violence from militants allied to Al-Qaeda or the Daesh group for more than a decade.
Social media has been awash with speculation that the spate of attacks may have killed dozens of soldiers, but AFP has been unable to independently verify those claims.
The junta, which seized power on the promise to crack down on the violence, has ceased to communicate on jihadist attacks.
On Sunday, militants carried out a major attack on a military detachment in the northern town of Nare, two security sources told AFP.
The previous day, the Burkinabe army’s unit in the northern city of Titao was “targeted by a group of several hundred terrorists,” one of the sources said.
While the source did not give a death toll for either attack, they said part of the military base in Titao had been destroyed.
The interior minister of Ghana, which borders Burkina Faso to the south, said the government had “received disturbing information from Burkina Faso of a truck carrying tomato traders from Ghana which was caught in a terrorist attack in Titao.”
Jihadist ‘coordination’
According to the same security source, another army base in Tandjari, in the east of the country, was also attacked Saturday, and several officers killed.
“This series of attacks is not a coincidence,” the source said. “There seems to be coordination among the jihadists.”
A separate security source told AFP that a “terrorist group attacked the (military) detachment in Bilanga,” in the east of the country, on Thursday.
“Much of the detachment was ransacked,” the source said, giving a toll of “about 10 deaths” among the soldiers and civilian volunteers fighting alongside the army.
A local source confirmed the attack, adding there was damage in the town of Bilanga, and that the assailants had stayed at the scene until the following day.
Despite the junta’s vow to restore security, Burkina Faso remains caught in a spiral of violence.
According to conflict monitor ACLED, the unrest has killed tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers since 2015 — and more than half of those deaths have come in the past three years.
